No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 295 



COW that gives 7,000 pounds of milk having 4 per cent, butter fat, that 

 little Leghorn hen is consuming two and one-half times more dry mat- 

 ter in a year per pound of live weight than is the Jersey cow. So you 

 see why with the quick growing, heavy powers of digestion, rapid as- 

 similation and reproduction of the domestic fowl that the^^ live short, 

 rapid lives and must have a good constitution to stand up under the 

 strain. 



One of the causes of low vitality is want of proper housing. Fowls 

 must be kept in the fresh air. In Fig. 12 is a simple little house for 

 protecting 3.5 hens, where the chickens live in fresh air practically all 

 the time. Some glass is provided to give protection in cold weather, 

 but the object is to open the cloth window except in storm weather. 



Fig. 13 shows a broody coop, a desirable fixture in a hen house. 

 Back of the perch platform is the only portion of the house that is 

 double boarded. The house has a concrete floor and a shed roof. 



Fig. 14 shows a covered dust wallow. Here the hens will not be 

 likely to soil or throw out the dust as where it is exposed. 



Fig. 15 is an end view of the house, showing the construction of 

 the walls. The principle is to avoid a dead air space. We simply let 

 the air circulate through these spaces in the wall between the studd- 

 ing and rafters. The double boarding is open at the bottom and top 

 so that the air can pass up around the space and by so doing prevent 

 this inside boarding from becoming cold and preventing moisture at 

 this point, and the hens are warmer than they would otherwise be. 

 The door on the back and front side of each pen is especially desir- 

 able because of the fact that the hens need to keep cool in summer as 

 much as they need to be protected in winter. These doors are kept 

 closed in the winter and when open in the summer allow the air to 

 pass up through and out the front of the house, making this building 

 much cooler in the warm weather than it otherwise would be. 



There is one way in which we lose vitality and never suspect it. 

 ]n fact, I know of no one way in which more trouble is likely to oc- 

 cur and not be suspected than this. In experiments conducted a few 

 years ago at Cornell a bunch of 50 eggs were kept in a living room for 

 14 days; another bunch of 50 were kept in a cold storage dairy room 

 and another in a room with a furnace. The average temperature in 

 the first instance was 65 degrees; that is, only living room tempera- 

 ture. The other averaged 50 degrees, a temperature that was so cold 

 that when the eggs were placed there we thought it might kill every 

 germ in them. The furnace room was about 80 degrees. They were 

 kei)t for 14 days and then all put into the incubator, and at the end 

 of 7 days 53 per cent, of those kept in the living room were fertile, 

 00 per cent, of those kept in cold storage, and only 24 per cent, of 

 tliose kept in the warm room. The hatching results showed 52 per 

 cent, from those kept in the living room, 70 per cent, from the eggs 

 kept in the dairy room, and no chicks hatched from those kept in the 

 furnace room, indicating that the germ had died because kept in too 

 warm a place. 



Following that exyieriment, here is another one in which all the eggs 

 were kept in the living room at 05 degrees and kei)t there for various 

 lengths of time, from 1 day to 7, 14. 21, 28 and 35 days, and then all 

 were i)ut into the incubator at the same time with the following re- 

 sults: Those kept 35 days, 8 per cent, fertile; those kept 28 days, 9 per 

 cent, fertile ; from 1 to 14 days, 78 per cent. ; 1 day, 86 per cent. ; and 



